Tony Travis wrote:
> I'm interested to know about other people's views and experiences of
> the reliability of COTS (i.e. non-ECC) memory?
My experience is that high-quality (non-generic) non-ECC memory doesn't
cost much less than same-brand ECC memory. Also, high-quality non-ECC
seems to perform slightly faster than ECC while getting few, if any,
errors. Furthermore, I use Asus motherboards almost exclusively--most
of which will accept either ECC or non-ECC memory--and these
motherboards usually won't even complete POST if the memory (any kind)
is faulty. At the same time, using /GENERIC/ non-ECC memory is like
gambling--there is a small chance it will work well. Overall, for
smaller systems, there is little advantage to buying ECC over non-ECC.
At the same time, there is no real disadvantage, either. I do, however,
see a HUGE advantage of buying more expensive, high-quality memory over
generic memory. Of course, this is just my limited experience and is
not intended to be gospel truth. It's not like I run any serious
applications on large clusters--I am just a Beowulf hobbyist that
repairs other people's desktop computers for a living.
BH
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